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Making a New Character
This is a quick guide to making a new character. Create a Character Sheet on Myth-Weavers We use Myth-Weavers for our character sheets so that they are easily accessible by the player and the DM. Make sure you set it so that anyone can view your sheet, and select "3.5e" for the type of character sheet you're creating. Select Your Race and Class All playable races are listed under the Races category on this wiki. Classes can be selected from either 3.5e or Pathfinder source materials. Homebrew (i.e. not official) classes may be played if the DM looks it over first and gives you permission. Feel free to ask the DM about races and classes if you're having trouble deciding or if you're confused about something. But there's so many classes! An easy way to narrow down the decision-making process is to figure out what class archetype you want to play, such as a frontlines warrior or a support-oriented spellcaster, or, failing that, what kinds of things you want your character to be good at. Say you want to play a speedy, evasive character. You'll probably want to examine the classes that rely on Dexterity such as rogues. If you wanted a character who's good at speaking and getting others to go along with their ideas, you would want to look at options such as the bard. Roll Ability Scores You roll 4d6 (i.e. a six-sided die four times) and throw out the lowest roll. Add up the remaining rolls, and that's your ability score. For example, if you rolled a 1, 2, 3, and 4, you'd throw out the 1 and add the 2, 3, and 4 together to get 9. Repeat this process until you have seven ability scores. Throw out the lowest overall number and allocate the remaining numbers as you please. If your rolls are judged to be too low due to a streak of bad luck, the DM may have you reroll your stats or will simply bump up one or two of your rolls. Allocate Ability Scores You choose where to put your rolled values for abilities; you don't have to assign them in the order you rolled them in. Because every class considers different ability scores important, it's advised that you place your better rolls in abilities that your class relies on (such as Charisma for bards and Strength for barbarians). Remember your race's modifiers to ability scores! Some of them will add +2 to an ability, and others have -2 to an ability. Allocate Skill Points Each class has a specific equation for determining how many skill points they get. For example, a skill point equation might be Int mod + 4. If your character had an Intelligence modifier of 2, you’d have 2+4=6 skill points at level 1. You can only have 4 ranks in a given skill at level one. This only applies to ranks. If your race gets +2 to Spot, you could still put in 4 ranks into Spot to have a total of +6 for Spot. Be mindful of class skills! We play by the Pathfinder rule where if a skill is listed as a class skill, you automatically get +3 to it, but only if you have at least one rank in it. Remember your race's modifiers to skills! Some of them will add +1 or even +2 to a given skill. Linguistics is a selectable character skill, though it's not listed on 3.5e character sheets. At the cost of one skill point, you may learn to speak a new language. Determine Hit Points Each class has a value called "Hit Die" (abbreviated to HD). Your starting hit points are your class’ HD plus your Constitution modifier. You’ll always have at least one hit point, even if your Constitution modifier plus your class’ HD would be 0 or less. Add Racial and Class Abilities Every race and class has specific abilities that you have access to at level 1. Check your race's page on the wiki and your class' source page to see what these abilities are. Choose a Feat Every class gets a feat at level 1 (in addition to any bonus feats they may gain from their class). Be mindful that some feats have prerequisites. Don't despair at how many feats there are! The DM or other online resources can help you narrow down the list to a few options you may find useful for your class. Base Attack Bonus, Grapple, and Saves Your base attack bonus and saves (Fortitude, Reflex, and Will values) are determined by your class (plus any ability score or racial bonuses). Your Grapple value is base attack bonus + Strength modifier + any Size modifiers. Choose Starting Languages Every character begins with Standard Kylian (the common tongue) and a racial language (which will be listed on their race wiki page). You also get an additional language to be proficient equal to your Intelligence modifier if it's a positive value. For example, a character whose Intelligence modifier is +3 will have 3 additional languages at level one. Languages are listed on this wiki along with their planet of origin and some notes about that language. It's advised you pick a language that your character would logically know. For reference, the most common languages in the galaxy are Morish, Alamin, Nicta-slio, and Eruino. Buy Gear and Other Items You can find a list of buyable items either here (3.5e) or here (Pathfinder). Your character's starting gold is determined by their class; you roll the dice specified by your class, and that's how much gold you have. Any gold you choose not to spend on character creation stays with you, so don't feel obligated to spend all your money. It’s also recommended you stay within your class’ proficiencies (listed on their class pages) for buying weapons and armor, as using weapons or armor you are not proficient in carries a penalty unless you have a feat for it. You may also want to buy utility items such as a bedroll, flint and tinder, etc, as those will surely be useful on long trips or in certain circumstances. Calculate AC Now that you have your armor, it's time to calculate your Armor Class (AC). All characters have a flat 10 AC. When equipped, armor gives a flat bonus to AC (labeled as Armor/Shield bonus on item lists). The maximum Dexterity bonus on armor means how much of your character’s Dexterity modifier applies when wearing that armor. For example, if you have a Dexterity modifier of 4 and your armor has a maximum Dexterity bonus of 2, only 2 of your Dexterity modifier would count towards your AC. Myth-Weavers will automatically calculate most of this once you input the relevant information, but it's helpful to know how it works! Write Down Relevant Information Make sure you have all of the relevant information for your character's items, abilities, and so on. This means damage rolls for weapons, what kinds of weapons they are, bonuses/penalties on armor, etc. You may need to call on this information mid-game, so it's helpful to have a quick reference on your character sheet. Myth-Weavers' "Other Notes" section is very helpful for this! Spells If your character is a spellcaster that must learn their spells (i.e. create a list of known spells), then do that according to your class' page. Write down any spells your character knows and how many spells they may cast per day. If your class is a spellcaster that uses Vancian magic (i.e. must prepare spells per day), then familiarize yourself with the spells at your disposal and write down how many spells per day your character gets (which is determined by your class). Bookmarking your class' spell list is recommended. In-Character Things While you should be thinking about what kind of person your character is throughout character creation, you may find it easier to do major in-character work after you've allocated your stats and can see on paper what kind of character you have, gameplay-wise. Maybe now that you see your character has a low Charisma score, you can decide that they're bad at interacting with people, or maybe their excellent Strength score is because they like exercising and working out all the time. Interplay between gameplay statistics and characters is part of what makes tabletop games fun. A good exercise for character work is to think of several people in their life -- one that your character hates, one that your character loves, and a "wildcard" person of either or neither type -- and write a quick description of them. Why does your character like/dislike that person? What did that person do in your character's life to merit that attitude? This can help you think about what your character's attitude towards people they encounter will be. It is recommended that your character effectively have a reason for going out into the galaxy and doing what they do. Perhaps they're looking for someone or something. Maybe they're on a journey of self-discovery. They could be running away from something. Goals are important to have in a character, or else they effectively are just "there" with no set goal in mind. Goals can change over the course of the game, so don't feel obligated to stick with one goal even when it no longer makes sense for your character. Another helpful thing to keep in mind is to realize that your character, by necessity, will be traveling with the other player characters. The player characters do not all have to be friends; they could be united by a common goal instead of enjoying each others' company. However, if your character's entire being hinges on that they're alone all the time, you may want to think about how that will play out in a game that is group-oriented by definition. You don't have to make your character a social animal who's friends with everyone; in fact, you could still have a character who likes being alone all the time and make it work. But you do have to recognize that your character will be interacting with, at the bare minimum, other player characters. Characters who respond to the environment they're in and the people they're around are often easiest for new players to use, because that character will continually cause things to happen instead of getting the plot stuck in a rut since nobody will really do anything. Once again, you don't need a perpetually curious character who's going to investigate every slightly unusual thing. It's just something to keep in mind; reacting to things that happen and trying to make new things happen is a core component of a plot-focused game. Category:Game Mechanics